The Left’s favorite playwright, Tony Kushner, is in a bind.
Kushner, you’ll recall, is the author of such politically radical travesties as Angels in America and Munich — and the author of far more mature works, such as Lincoln and Fences. Kushner is the type of fellow who says: “The founding of the State of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity. . . . I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.” But he still likes to stand on his Jewish ethnicity as a crutch for his leftism. He’s an anti-capitalism radical who has earned millions of dollars and summers in a Provincetown vacation home.
And now, Kushner has a problem.
His problem: He’s a Jewish gay guy remaking West Side Story — a musical about Polish and Puerto Rican gangs, originally written by four Jews. This violates the core tenet of intersectionality, which maintains that it’s cultural appropriation when people of one culture write about another culture, and that it’s “white privilege” when too many members of “white America” (which now includes Jews) earn money on a particular endeavor. Kushner declares himself a “big believer in identity politics and political correctness.”
So how will he square this circle? He explains:
I mean, it’s a little tricky with West Side Story. . . . It’s also not exclusively about Puerto Ricans. It’s about white guys and Puerto Rican guys and white girls and Puerto Rican girls. So what does that mean, we should have two directors and two screenwriters?
Well, by his standards, yes. But he’s not going to give up that paycheck or that creative project:
Why shouldn’t we want to be politically correct, if by correct you mean not toeing the party line but toeing the line of history, being on the right side of history, being moral and ethical. . . . I’m aware of my privileged position, but do I believe I’m doing something wrong by writing West Side Story? I absolutely do not. I’m much more afraid of the musical theater queens.
Well, of course he doesn’t believe he’s doing something wrong. His ox would be gored if he abided by the idiotic intersectional principles he claims to support. Because Kushner is left-wing, the Los Angeles Times gives him a pass here, so long as he utters the buzzwords that the Left prefers. But there’s little doubt that he’s avoiding the consequences of his own ideology.